I've spent 20 years in media and marketing, both on the corporate side and in agencies large and small. In 2009, I left Fleishman-Hillard to found Elasticity, focusing on helping companies progressively manage reputation and market brands by creatively "triangulating" integrated communications strategies between public relations, social media channels, and search engine optimization. Connect further with me @AaronPerlut.

Pizza Hut Goes 'FAM' Trip To Launch Stuffed Crust Buzz

If you’ve worked on the consumer side of marketing or public relations, you are probably familiar with the art of the “FAM” or familiarization trip. For the uninitiated, FAM trips are typically free or very low-cost trips used by travel agents, destination resorts and others as a means of promoting a locale. Essentially they work to familiarize media with the destination who will then report on the experience, thus delivering the message to the end-consumer.

“In destination marketing, the idiom ‘seeing is believing’ is our mantra and familiarization trips are a critical tool,” said Brian Hall, the longtime destination marketer and chief marketing officer of the St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission. ”It is one thing to tell customers about your community while showing them pictures and video. However, to really convince them, they need to experience the city first-hand by walking the streets, visiting iconic attractions and mixing with people to engage all their senses and understand the essence of the destination.”

Terfehr and Pizza Hut PR team at the setup for Discover Great event

These tactics, however, aren’t just for island spots or remote rural getaways (my favorite, by the way). Consumer brands — particularly companies like AppleApple in the consumer electronics space — have used them with great effectiveness. But recently I was surprised to find Pizza Hut employing a FAM trip for diverse bloggers as a means to seed advance interest in its forthcoming 3-Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza.

“The more people know about our brand, the more reasons they have to become a greater fan of the brand,” said Doug Terfehr, Pizza Hut’s global director of public relations. “By providing media with a greater deep dive into how we do business, how we roll out product and how sophisticated the process really is, the more we’re able to separate ourselves from the competitors. It’s extremely valuable for us to do this, especially when we have news related to passion points about our brand. Stuffed Crust pizza is one of those points.”

Take a pre-event tour of the venue and have an exclusive sampling of the new 3-Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza with Bates providing play-by-play.

The Discover Great party began with three bands and open bar.

After the dust settled, Pizza Hut’s efforts seemingly hit the mark based on coverage of the product.

“Coming in, I was a little skeptical about the 3-Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza, but I was totally sold after my first slice,” wrote Sujeet Patel on the male-focused GuysGab blog. “Everything works so well together! If you’re not careful you’ll find yourself eating half of the pie yourself, and hating yourself in the morning.”

Food-focused Grubgrade positioned it a bit differently, yet on the positive side.

“I’ve never been a big fan of Pizza Hut products and that leans more towards my disdain for their pan style pizza (for which I might be in the small minority)…” wrote Ryan Haybok. “…If you like the original Stuffed Crust Pizza, there’s a good chance you won’t miss it once you try new 3-Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza. I never cared much for the original, but the newcomer stands out for me.”

Were there critics of the trip? Yes, but more focused on execution than the product.

“In most cases, when a blogger outreach event is planned around a particular product launch, a significant portion of the event should be situated in a photo-friendly area — often a test kitchen or a well-lit room — where taste-makers and influencers can taste the new product, take photos or video, ask questions and interact,” said Foodbeast publisher Elie Ayrouth. “I’d say this is where Pizza Hut faltered. Yes, it tasted superb, but why did you fly a group of media out to potentially photograph and cover your product, if you’re gonna serve your new product to them in the dark on the lawn of a concert venue?”

While appreciating the constructive feedback, Terfehr suggested there was a broader purpose, “Our intent was to provide a complete brand experience, and make sure that the product was the hero.” And that “complete brand experience” was ultimately the key to Pizza Hut’s success in this case, as the entire endeavor was as much product sampling as it was brand immersion.

Indeed, the easy way for media to sample a new product would be to simply send the bloggers a free pizza, which in fact, is the norm. That’s what Apple and other consumer tech companies do for the most part, after all. In this case, however, Pizza Hut followed the destination playbook, providing an end-to-end deep dive into the fabric of the company and personalities behind the pizza, which typically generates more meaningful discussion.

And while the new 3-Cheese offering is presently in just three of its restaurants nationwide, the broad scale blog coverage and subsequent social media conversation has begun the buzz amongst readers, product zealots, and other influencers who attended the event — all of it driving anticipation to the full-scale rollout Oct. 20 when the 3-Cheese hits all 6,300 of the chain’s U.S. restaurants.

FAM trips aren’t a new tactic for non-destination brands, but they’re also not readily used. Savvy organizations may want to consider following Pizza Hut’s lead, because by the time the product hits mass-market, FAM trips can help create familiarity and, forgive the pun, build an appetite for the product or service.

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